Paralyzed Inside Old Man Willow: Caught in a Depression Trap

“Pippin had vanished. The crack by which he had laid himself, had closed together, so that not a chink could be seen. Merry was trapped: another crack had closed about his waist; his legs lie outside, but the rest of him was inside a dark opening, the edges of which gripped like a pair of pincers.”-J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter 6: The Old Forest

I’ve been blocked. For months. That’s not to say I haven’t been writing. I’ve written lots of fragments, but they’re all crap. They inhabit my Crap folder (no, it isn’t really called that, but it oughta be). This is another attempt to actually explain my lack of output in the past few months. I’ll count it a success if anyone actually reads it. Of course, in order for that to happen, I have to actually POST it. And that’s hard to do when you’ve been swallowed up by Old Man Willow.

Where did this come from?

It is my speculation that one cause of my latest black depressive episode arises from a step I took back in May of 2012, when I finally told the story of my rape/home invasion experience of 22 years ago. It was a personal revelation, made in order to fulfill an assignment (ironically about depression) on Yahoo! Contributor Network. It seemed like it was time to tell that story and clear the air. Plus, telling it allowed my responses in other fora to pack more of a punch, the punch of firsthand experience. I got a few condolences (I’m not dead yet!) and some admiration (they must not know me too well!) but mostly it went unnoticed around the webz, since this place is so big. 

I’ve been trying to break my inability to post meaningful content for awhile now, and, for some reason, I have come up against a wall, a psychic pushback and has made forming coherent phrases and sentences nigh unto impossible at times. It has been very frustrating. It seems to me that the only way to work myself out of the depressive hole I’ve fallen into is to write, but I can’t make it work. So I try again, and again, and again. And the frustration rises. Now, the depression is kicking in hard. My favorite holiday, Halloween, is tomorrow, and I can’t even muster up the energy to find a costume. 

At home, life is busy and unforgiving, peppered with short quiet patches where I contemplate just how to achieve all the high-flown goals I’ve put forward for myself over the past year. And then I stare at the hoarder’s hell I live in and despair. I can’t even get to certain corners of my house. I could initiate a thorough cleaning session, but it would take at least 30 of these to make a dent, and of course, my chronic back pain and sciatica make even one 2 hour session a real challenge. (Oh yeah, and there’s all those regular duties I have to complete first).

Add to that that my current pain medication is becoming less and less effective. So there’s a physical mess, a mental blockage, probable PTSD, lack of a social support system in my area (which wouldn’t matter because I’m chronically schizoid and avoidant anyway), escalating chronic pain, and oh yeah, perimenopause, let’s add that in for colorful effect. So things don’t look so rosy in this neck of rural Tennessee right now. 

If you really want a description of how it feels to be in my head right now, think of the lowest level of the psychic construct concrete city in the movie “Inception.” I feel somewhat like Ken Watanabe looked after he had been caught in this matrix for what seemed like years and years to him but were actually mere moments in real life. I know this is a paralyzing illusion, but that doesn’t make it any less hard to escape.

If you’ve stayed with me until now, you deserve a prize. Really I’m just trying to get my fingers moving again and a coherent path to writing regularly going again. This too will pass, and, in the meantime, I think I hear Frodo coming with Tom Bombadil. Nah, I just imagined it. In real life, I have to dig myself out of the clutches of the ancient dark forest willow all by myself. Wish me luck.